The food court of the service station rang with voices, mobiles, the clatter of trays and cutlery. Two babies were wailing in concert. Hands shaking, Hannah ripped open the pack of sandwiches. She hadn’t wanted to stop but she hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast and she was losing her ability to focus. Five or six miles back, she’d gone to overtake and nearly been ploughed off the road. She hadn’t even seen the other car before she’d pulled out.
The sandwich was stale but she finished it and drank a bitter double espresso before checking her phone again. Every few minutes since Eastbourne, she’d been flicking her eyes over to the passenger seat, but the red light had refused to flash. Now, thank God, Tom had replied: Of course you can stay. In now and will be all night.
She tapped out a quick response and put the phone back on the table. Almost immediately, it started flashing again. Where are you? said the subject line.
Not her brother this time but Mark.
Her heart thumped heavily. Did he suspect something – or know? Could his parents have contacted him? She clicked on the message and saw the rest: Did you meet up with Tom in the end? She sat back, breathing out. She’d forgotten to let him know what she was doing for the day; that was all. She thought for a moment then wrote a reply: Sorry, yes, with T&L. Sara, old Malvern friend, coming for dinner – might stay if you don’t mind? Haven’t seen her for years. She read it through then sent it. The lie was cowardly but so what? What was one tiny lie compared to all his huge ones? She’d send another text later to say she’d had too much wine and was going to stay the night.
She put the phone back in her bag and made her way outside. A few miles from Eastbourne, the hail had been succeeded by a heavy rain that thundered on her umbrella now as she ran back to the car. Cloud had blotted the light from the sky leaving only an angry crimson line behind the row of scrappy pines that edged the car park. The clock on the dashboard said quarter to six.
The motorway was even busier, people driving into London for Saturday night. Ahead, tail lights wove back and forth across the lanes, tens of red eyes in the dark. She stayed as far back as she could from the lorries that thundered past with their sides billowing, water spinning off their tyres in great arcs.
She’d gone ten or twelve miles when, out of the corner of her eye, she saw her phone light up. Mark, she thought, but when she reached across to the passenger seat to check, Neesha’s name was on the screen. Neesha – in all the confusion about the Audi and Mark’s parents, she had forgotten she’d called her.
Flashing a look in her rear-view mirror, Hannah cut across the slow lane, her rear bumper almost catching the angry muzzle of a juggernaut going much faster than she’d estimated. The driver leaned on the horn, letting loose a blast so loud it seemed to lift the car off the road. She was still doing sixty-five as she roared on to the hard shoulder, skidding on a layer of loose gravel as she braked. She answered the call just as it was about to ring out.
‘Neesha.’
‘Mrs Reilly.’
Even over the roar of the traffic, Hannah could hear the difference in her voice. It was thick and nasal, as if she had a heavy cold. ‘Are you all right?’ she said. ‘You sound . . .’
‘Unemployed?’ Neesha said.
‘What?’ For a moment, Hannah didn’t understand.
‘He fired me.’
‘Fired . . . What?’
‘You promised me you wouldn’t tell him.’
‘I didn’t,’ Hannah said. ‘I didn’t. He . . . guessed.’ Even as the word left her mouth, she realised how lame it sounded.
‘Guessed?’ Neesha’s voice was full of scorn. ‘Oh, well, that’s fine then. Perfect. Thanks, anyway. Perhaps you can tell me what we’re supposed to do now, Steven and I, with a child and a mortgage and no money coming in at all. I told you . . .’ her voice seemed to catch ‘. . . I told you I couldn’t lose my job.’
‘Neesha, I don’t think it’s got anything to do with that – really, I don’t. Mark was fine about it – actually, he said he was flattered that you and I both thought—’
‘That’s bullshit,’ she said. ‘It might be what he told you but . . .’
‘He hasn’t told me anything. I didn’t even know about it. Leo told me yesterday that you were on a warning – he said you’d messed up some figures. He didn’t tell me you’d been . . .’
‘On a warning?’ Down the line came a guttural snort. ‘These figures I messed up – did you ask what they were?’
‘No,’ Hannah admitted.
‘I wrote down a telephone number wrong – I transposed two digits. I put it right in a minute, thirty seconds, all it took was a look on the Net, but Mark jumped on it like he’d caught me siphoning money from the accounts. I knew there was something going on – he was furious with me from the moment he stepped into the office. He was just waiting for an excuse.’
‘Neesha,’ Hannah said, ‘you told me yourself that you’d been making mistakes, trying to juggle—’
‘Two tiny mistakes – the other one was a spelling mistake in a letter. Nothing important, nothing you’d sack someone for. I only said that to make you feel better – to make it seem like there really was a chance that I’d got it wrong and there wasn’t actually something going on between him and that woman.’
She hadn’t seen the papers, Hannah realised; she couldn’t have. ‘Neesha . . .’ she started, but Neesha wasn’t listening.
‘Oh, don’t even bother,’ she said. ‘I just thought you should know what you’ve done.’ Before Hannah could say anything else, she had hung up. Hannah tried three times to ring her back but each time the call went straight to voicemail.
The windscreen wipers beat like a pulse as the GPS brought her back through the outskirts of south London. The roads were still busy but the pavements were almost empty, and the few people who were out hid under umbrellas or huddled in doorways. It wasn’t half past seven yet but it felt late, as if the pubs and restaurants had closed already and everyone else – all the decent, sensible people – was tucked safely away at home.
She’d thought about driving to Tom’s but crossing central London on a Saturday night could take hours; much quicker to leave the car in Parsons Green and get the Piccadilly line to Holloway. She imagined arriving, her relief when he opened the front door and ushered her off the street into the light and warmth. He’d take her straight to the kitchen, pour her a glass of wine and demand the whole story. The idea of telling him made her feel nauseous but she’d just have to come out and say it, there was no other way. He’d listen quietly – God, he was going to be horrified – and then he’d ask her: What are you going to do?
As she waited for the lights at the foot of Wandsworth Bridge, tears rolled down her cheeks. She was going to get a divorce. Divorce – the word tolled in her mind. It was so final, so – absolute. They’d fight, there would be some legal wrangling – not much: she didn’t want anything except her own savings back – and then it would be over, finished, and they’d never speak to one another again. The thought caused her a pain so sharp it took her breath away. Sitting on the beach in the dark, feeding the fire with driftwood and talking as if they’d known each other for years; dancing in Williamsburg; the kiss in the alley as the J train had clattered overhead back into Manhattan – it was all gone.
But the lies . . . she knew she’d never be able to get past them. She couldn’t stay with Mark now that she knew he could lie like this, lie and keep lying even when she begged for the truth, one story after another, all plausible, all perfectly woven until she picked at the one semi-loose thread and they unravelled in her hands. If she stayed, it would mean living with the possibility – the likelihood – of lies for the rest of her life.
And the things he’d lied about, too. Lying about his brother she could understand – even forgive. In his place, meeting someone she really liked, perhaps she would have done the same in the tentative early days. But you wouldn’t have kept on lying, argued her inner voice; when you knew the relationship was getting serious, you would have said something, even if it meant losing him. And his parents: he’d lied to her about them from the very beginning, before he could ever really have known their relationship would be significant.
‘The boring, ordinary, petit bourgeois people he had to leave behind.’ She heard his father’s voice again. Was that why Mark had lied about them? Had he despised them so much? She thought of the pile of magazine clippings, the aspiration and yearning for sophistication that had risen off every hoarded page like steam. Was that why Mark kept his half of the bedroom so pared back? she wondered. Was that his way of rejecting his surroundings, refusing to own any part of that stifling bungalow with its chintzy rocking chairs and fabric flowers? He’d been designing a different sort of life for himself, hadn’t he, page by magazine page?
And now Neesha. Hannah knew in her bones that Mark had fired her for talking about Hermione’s calls. Why else would he have gone to such lengths to work out who’d told her? And if her for firing Neesha had been legitimate, he would have told her, Hannah, wouldn’t he? He always talked to her about work – under normal circumstances, there was no way he’d fire his assistant without discussing it with her first.
She turned into Studdridge Street, only a minute from home now. Home. Warm light shone from the windows of almost every house, people settling in for cosy Saturday evenings of dinner and television. She thought about the walk back to the station in the rain, the hour or so she’d spend sitting soaked and cold on the Tube to Holloway. She waited for an oncoming car to pass and then made the left turn into Quarrendon Street. There was a parking spot right on the end behind a white van and she pulled in and turned off the engine. She unplugged the GPS and put it back in the glove compartment then sat for a moment in the sudden quiet. The red light was flashing on her BlackBerry again but it was just her brother, asking what time she thought she’d get there; she could answer him once she got to the station. She dropped the phone into her bag, braced herself for the rain and got out.
Tucking the handle of the umbrella between her shoulder and ear, she hitched her bag on to her shoulder and slid the key into the car door. A darting movement at ground level startled her for a second but it was just a cat, the fat tabby from across the road. Rainwater streamed along the gutter at her feet.
‘Don’t scream, and don’t try and run.’
Hannah froze. The voice came from directly behind her, a foot away. A man’s voice, quiet, in control. Mark’s but not Mark’s – scratchier, the accent less cultured. For a second or two the world seemed to stop. She made to turn round but a strong hand had circled the top of her arm, and it was gripping hard, keeping her facing away.
‘Just do what I tell you and everything will be fine. Give me the key.’
‘Get off me. Get off – you’re—’
She tried to shake free of him but the hand gripped harder, fingers pressing into her flesh, sending pain shooting down her arm. She felt hot breath on her cheek, his mouth an inch from her ear. ‘Shut up,’ he said, his voice harder now, ‘and give me the key.’
She jabbed her other arm backwards, elbow up, hoping to make contact somewhere, surprise him enough to loosen his grip just for a second, but he anticipated her and grabbed hold of her wrist. He yanked it up behind her back and she felt something tear in her shoulder. Her umbrella fell to the pavement, followed by the car key. She heard the splash as it landed in the gutter and felt a stab of despair: the plastic fob was light; the coursing rainwater would carry it away and she’d never find it in the dark.
The police – where were the police? She twisted her head but her view was blocked by the white van she’d parked behind, and the Honda she’d seen at lunchtime had been around the curve in the street, on the same side. It was hidden from sight – or she was. She opened her mouth to scream but the hand that had circled her arm was now clamped across her face, forcing her head back. She struggled but he was too powerful, and every time she tried to get free, excruciating pain tore through her shoulder. The taste of leather was in her mouth – he was wearing gloves.
He kicked her feet out from under her and pulled her sharply round. She gasped with the pain, realised her mouth was partially uncovered and screamed. The sound was shockingly loud. She felt him flinch, and hope filled her: someone would have heard it – the police, one of the neighbours. Someone would come to see what was going on. Someone would help her.
Seconds later, the hope died: they wouldn’t have time. He half-pushed, half-dragged her the few steps to the van and pulled the back door open. With one neat move, he knocked her legs out from under her and shoved her forward. She fell face first, knocking the top of her head against the floor. Behind her, the van door slammed shut.